


The Vagus | Aurora V.

by Fflurion, Imaginist, Solara



Series: Empire of the Sun [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Gore, Bloodthirsty, Child Death, Child Soldiers, Chimon is adorable and naive, Death, Depression, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kirigakure | Hidden Mist Village, Letters, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Minor Character Death, Morality, Ninja philosophy, OC-centric, OC-self insert - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Philosophy, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Drama, Reincarnation, Second Shinobi War, Self Harm, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Self-Insert, Shinra is special and maybe slightly crazy, Third Shinobi War, Trauma, War, War Is Not Pretty, inner turmoil, may be triggering to some readers, seven ninja swordsman of the hidden mist, swords are amazing, what am i doing with life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:34:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23443285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fflurion/pseuds/Fflurion, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imaginist/pseuds/Imaginist, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solara/pseuds/Solara
Summary: They had a dream, to fly far away. However, most dreams don't come true.This is a poignant novel of love, duty and sacrifice set amongst the turmoil of two wars across two dimensions.-------------------------------------------------------------
Relationships: Male OC & The Seven Swordsman of the Hidden Mist, More Relationships Tags to be Added, Shinra & Chimon, Shinra & Kisame, Shinra and Yagura, Shinra/Akiya
Series: Empire of the Sun [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686511
Kudos: 4





	The Vagus | Aurora V.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Shinra confronts his inner turmoil and conflicting views.
> 
> In which Chimon waits patiently, lives on, and yet she seems unfulfilled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is more of a teaser and prologue than an actual chapter. this series of stories is going to be mainly and heavily be based on shinra. shinra-centric! in case you get confused, this fanfic is a matter of fact a naruto fanfiction oc-insert! the timeline is going to be from the second shinobi war and after. 
> 
> this is my first time writing this kind of fanfiction. especially with how unique the perspectives are. please bear with me.
> 
> this fanfiction is not for the lighthearted. i will be discussing certain themes that may be triggering or depressing to some readers so please read at your own discretion. i will try and insert warnings for each chapter. 
> 
> ! warnings ! : depression, war, death, gore, mental instability, mental trauma, inner turmoil, self-conflict, suicide, self-hate.

**_"This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war."_ **

\- epiphany, All Quiet on the Western Front.

_A fan fiction, not meant to glorify war, death, or pain, but to bring attention and enthral those who read it. Not to speak about what actually happened, but to adapt two stories, and combine them into our own._

**_'Lest we Forget'_ **

**_..._ **

_"I have not sacrificed anything for my freedom. It was given to me, by those who came before me and sacrificed so much. So now, it is my responsibility to never forget the service and the sacrifices of soldiers, sailors, aircrew and merchant seaman."_

**_..._ **

_ May  _ _all our family, great grandparents, uncles, distant relations who died in the wars, no matter what they were doing, which country, rest in peace._

 _ May _ _we remember their sacrifices, because they lost so much...and because they gave everything, we thank them._

_And as we will and shall._

_'_ _ In Remembrance.' _

**_..._**

_[A Naruto Fanfiction]_

_Published on the 11th of November, 11:00GMT, 2018, in remembrance of those who died, both in WWI as well as WWII._

_Written by Myosotis_

_Imaginist writes Isaac._

_Solara writes Reverie._

© 2020 AARON

* * *

_23:46 GMT. 11th of November, 1941. In the skies, outskirts of Berlin. A lone spitfire flies through the sky._

_"...We're going down."_

_There was a stunned silence, filled only by the sound of the humming engine. It was as if the two fliers couldn't even stand to process it themselves - and everything seemed so quiet, so normal, just like every other good raid they had done._

_The sun on the horizon flashed like a nearly extinguished lantern, sending its weak crimson glow to drift among the clouds. The plane gleamed palely in the gathering darkness as it glided through the air, running on empty, and the two men sat cramped in the cockpit, not a word spoken. Their masks filtered their breathing, a steady, yet occasionally sporadic in and out as they tried to process about what the pilot had just said._

_"A-Are you sure?" The navigator spoke hesitantly, voice crackling through._

_"...I wish I wasn't."_

_He could see the pilot's eyes through his mask, a sparkling blue._

_"We're out of gas. There's no more petrol, and we're..."_

_"...Over Germany," The navigator said._

_The sun had vanished completely - they had blinked, and it suddenly disappeared._

_There were no stars in the sky. At least none tonight._

_It was just a shaded black, reflecting the pilot's masked face back at him. He knew there were lights below, lights of German cities that they were meant to be bombing, that were filled with soldiers that would soon be capturing them, or worse, execute and torture them, but as always, he couldn't stand to look down._

_He looked up, and let his navigator do the looking for him._

_"... I'm sorry, Rev."_

_"No no no," Rev said urgently, shifting a little to put a hand on his pilot's shoulder. "It's not your fault. We'll get through this-"_

_"No!" The pilot snapped, and there was a thud as a gloved hand hit the metal. "It's my fucking fault. I-I should have said something, Rev, the mechanics couldn't be bothered to do a proper check on our petrol tank, I should've told them to-!"_

_"Isaac! Please, calm down!"_

_"How can I be calm, Reverie? We're falling, we're falling down-!"_

_"No, we're gliding. Relax. Isaac, we're going down but it's slow, we'll figure something out."_

_"Isn't that even worse? What can we do, Rev?" Isaac's breaths came quick and fast, wracking his lungs and scratching his throat. "I can't jump, I can't, I just can't, you can't make me use the parachute! I-I don't want us to die, I don't want us to fall, I don't want you to, I **failed** you-"_

_"Isaac...Isaac! Look at me!" A hand was gripped tight around his leather padded shoulders, one over the boy's masked cheek, forcing the pilot to take his eyes off of the petrol meter. Eyes could be seen through the windows in the masks, watery blue meeting an earthy green._

_"... Isaac."_

_"...Rev."_

_"Breathe, Isaac."_

_The spitfire glided through the sky, engine sputtering to a monotonous sound, then quiet. There was no doubt that the plane would bypass Germany. The spitfire; famous for its combination of speed, manoeuvrability and firepower is considered as a formidable killing machine against the Germans, yet now...its broken. Utterly broken. Succumbing to its imperfections. Dim crimson lights on the dashboard flashed signifying the impending doom, and there was a shudder as Isaac leaned forward, head bowed down, and started shedding silent tears._

_The altitude had gone down, and the mask came off, revealing a head of messy white blonde hair, a sharp pink nose and watery blue eyes that were wet with tears, with long, pale eyelashes that were clumped together._

_Rev gave up as well, exhausted, his own mask fell at his feet. Dirty blonde hair fell over his tired green eyes, that always seemed to vary in colour every time you looked at him. His eyebrows were creased together as he bit his lip, trying to think... Just trying to think._

_They were both enlisted underage._

_For the adventure?_

_For the friendship?_

_For the money?_

_For the respect?_

_For the death, the horror, the hopelessness and fear of it all?_

_"I'm sorry. I-I failed. Rev... I'm scared. I don't want to be here, I want to be home, I want to stay in the sky, I don't want to go down... I don't want to fail you, I never wanted to fail you but I've... I'm scared, Rev."_

_They were only eighteen, both enlisted at sixteen._

_Isaac had a little sister at home, Megan, a mother and a beautiful girlfriend who he had left without warning. His father had died when he was three, and Isaac liked to think himself as the man of the house when he was small._

_The war was hyped up, the soldiers heroes, and Isaac wanted to join the heroes. So he lied about his age, the result?_

_Enlistment._

_Isaac was an agile flier. The Spitfire was small and light, just like him, and it soared like the seagulls he had seen at Cromer beach when he was young - the voices, wanderers, the free._

_Whenever he flew, Rev couldn't help but compare his eyes to the sky, and it was as if he didn't even know there was the earth beneath him._

_Above the clouds, above all of his problems, he'd just see the sky. He was a laugher, the jokester, a maker of hilarious pranks and the one who always managed to make people chuckle. The youngster that the older pilots looked to when they were in need of some cheer, some hope, with his navigator always standing next to him, standing guard, making sure he didn't do things that were too stupid and laughing when Isaac did something that was so hilariously dumb that he couldn't help it._

_He had Rev to guide him. His navigator, the one who always showed him the way, where to press that button, where to go up and where to go down. Even on the ground, without Rev, Isaac's sense of direction was so terrible he'd probably get lost in an air hanger._

_Reverie had lived in Edinburgh, from a poor family, yet despite the destitution he was quite tall for his age. He was a kid who did newspaper runs each day, or some may call him, the 'paper boy.' Quiet, rational, and what seemed like colour-changing eyes that showed his thoughts more than most. The war brought soldiers, brought money - and that was what his family needed. What he needed._

_How the sergeants completely overlooked the fact that they were underage displays a clear understanding that this war needs **more**. There were not enough soldiers, not enough sacrifices in order for an end. Both didn't know that. At least, now they do._

_Rev was always in the back seat, looking forwards, towards his pilot. The one who flew, who did what he told him to no matter what, the pilot who ironically had vertigo, that he simply let his navigator do the looking, the leading like a blind man and his guide dog, a relationship built on trust._

_The radio crackled, but it was almost as if that Isaac was deaf to it until he said what it was they needed to do. Then Isaac would laugh, say something with that odd backstreet London accent, and then do exactly what Rev told him._

_If Rev told him to go diving headfirst to the ground, then you could bet that Isaac would do it blindfolded._

_Because the two had utter trust in each other, that they would not let the other die, they would not let the other down._

_They had a dream together. A big one. Maybe it seemed preposterous, too much leaning on the visionary side. Something the society does not want. Two young men with big dreams, in their Spitfire that they had claimed for their own._

_But here they were._

_A declining Spitfire, two boys of only eighteen, one sobbing with his hands still hopelessly on the controls, and the other holding on to his friend's shoulders, head resting against the pilot's seat while keeping up the facade that he was fine, that his pilot was the only one who was crying._

_"...I'm scared," Isaac whispered, voice small and delicate, like a glass vase that was about to shatter any moment. He looked small, hopeless, curled up in the seat, Rev's hands on his shoulders. He felt **small,** he felt **hopeless.**_

_"..."_

_The navigator couldn't say they were going to be fine. That would be a lie, though a kind one._

_"Isaac."_

_"...Yeah?"_

_A silence as Rev thought about what to say. It was all hopeless, already. They were going down, none of them wanted to die. Two young men, a small pilot and his tall navigator, both powerless against the pull of fate, a stupid mistake that could've easily been avoided._

_Two young men._

_Two dreamers._

_Two of many who had already fallen._

_Rev's lips parted, chapped and dry, and the words came out in a decision._

_"...Tell me- Tell me about the northern lights again."_

_'One last time' remained unspoken, but it hung in the air, though the pair tried to ignore it._

_"... There are lights." Isaac said, like he had many times before. "In the sky, that we learnt about in school. That come in... blue, purple, and greens, the cool colours that calm you down, all the beautiful colours that I think that I can sometimes see in your eyes, even though you insist it's just green. And one day... In... In..."_

_He gave a light chuckle, but Isaac's light voice broke slightly. More tears fell, white hair over his eyes and cheeks shining in the dark like a sad beacon._

_"...I-In the future, we'll... see it. We'll fly there, with you guiding me and me flying this plane, this... very plane."_

_"Ahh...Named?"_

_"... the Aurora Vagus. Remember? I told you it was stupid to combine Greek and Latin, but... I think it's fine now. It's a good name. And we'll fly, through the lights. The... beautiful lights. Away from all this war. Death. Bombs and Germans. Just... you and me, and the Aurora V. In the future, when this bloody war is over."_

_As Isaac spoke to his navigator, their plane, the Aurora V, a standard issue spitfire, went down, engine finally gone._

_Down._

_Down._

_Down, until they hit the ground._

* * *

**WHAT HE SAW**

Let me confess. All of us, I suppose, like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth, bravely and forthrightly, without thought of personal loss or discredit. Certainly, that was my conviction back in the third war. Shinra: a secret hero. The Okami Pariah. If the stakes ever became high enough-if the evil were evil enough, if the good were good enough-I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage that had been accumulating inside me over the years. Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it justified the past while amortizing the future.

I was put on an active roster duty to fight a war I hated. I was only a genin at that time. Young, yes, and politically naive, but even so the shinobi war between Iwa and Konoha that pulled everything in seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty: Was this cause a civil war here? A war of national liberation or simple aggression? Who started it, and when, and why? Was the third Raikage a communist stooge, or a nationalist saviour, or both, or neither? Is there even a difference with each leader, they're all old war battle hawks who crave war. Kiri was already divided on these and a thousand other issues, and the debate had spilled out across the floor and into the streets. Even the advisors by the Mizukage could not agree on even the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty was of moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfects, but it seemed to me that when a country goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead.

In any case those were my convictions, and back in the academy I had taken a modest stand against the war. Nothing radical, no hothead stuff. Oddly, though, it was almost entirely an intellectual activity. I brought some energy to it, of course, but it was the energy that accompanies almost any abstract endeavour; I felt no personal danger; I feel no sense of an impending crisis in my life. Stupidly, with a kind of smug removal that I can't begin to fathom, I assumed that the problems of killing and dying did not fall within my special village.

There were occasions, I believed, when a nation was justified in using shinobi force to achieve its ends, to stop some comparable evil, and I told myself that in such circumstances I would've willingly jumped into the battle. The problem, though, was that a draft board of all retired or graduated, old or young, did not let you choose your war.

Beyond all this, or at the very centre, was the raw fact of terror. I did not want to die. Not ever. But certainly not then, not there, not in a wrong war. Jumping past the roofs of where the delegates and envoys reside in as guest quarters, I sometimes felt the fear spreading inside me like weeds. I imagined myself dead. I imagined myself doing things I could not do-charging an enemy position, taking aim at the vitals of another human being.

At some point, I began thinking seriously about Konoha. The border to the land of fire lay a few hundred miles west. Both my conscience and my instincts were telling me to make a break for it, just take off and run like hell and never stop. In the beginning, the idea seemed purely abstract, the word Konoha printing itself out in my head; but after a time I could see particular shapes and images, the sorry details of my own future-a rented room in Shukuba, a battered travel bag, the thought of disappointment in my father's eyes. I could almost hear his voice, and my mother's. Run, I'd think. Then I'd think, Impossible. Then a second later I'd think, _Run._

It was a moral split. I couldn't make up my mind. I feared the war, yes, but I also feared exile. I was afraid of walking away from my own life, my friends and my family, my whole history, everything that mattered to me. I feared losing the respect of my parents. I feared the conduct. I feared ridicule and censure. My home village was a conservative little spot on one of the lesser fishing ports, a place where tradition counted, and it was easy to imagine people sitting around a table down at the old tea house, cups poised, the conversation slowly zeroing in on the young Shinra kid, how the damned sissy had taken off for Konoha. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I'd sometimes carry on fierce arguments with those people. I'd be screaming at them, telling them how much I detested their blind, thoughtless, automatic acquiescence to it all, their simple-minded patriotism, their prideful ignorance, their love-it-or-leave-it platitudes, how they were sending me off to fight a war they didn't understand and didn't want to understand. I held them responsible. By Kami, yes, I _did._ All of them-I held them personally and individually responsible-the merchants and farmers, the pious shrinegoers, the chatty housewives, the veterans of the past wars. They didn't know history. _My_ history. They didn't know the first thing about Diem's tyranny, or the nature of Vietnamese nationalism, or the long colonialism of the French-this was all too damned complicated, it required foreknowledge and experience-but no matter, it was a war, plain and simple, which was how they liked things, and you were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons. 

I was bitter, sure. But it was so much more than that. The emotions went from outrage to terror to bewilderment to guilt to sorrow and then back again to outrage. I felt a sickness inside me. Real disease.

I've hinted at it but I never told the real, full truth. How I cracked. Broken. How one morning, standing on the fishing ports, I felt something break open in my chest. I don't know what it was. I'll never know. But it was rea, I know that much, it was a physical rupture-a crackling-leaking-popping feeling. I remember dropping everything. Quickly, almost without thought, I walked out of the ports to home. It was midmorning, I remember, and the house was empty. Down in my chest there was still that leaking sensation, something very warm and precious spilling out, and I was covered with blood and fish-stink, and for a long while I just concentrated on holding myself together. I remember taking a hot-searing shower. I remember packing a bag and carrying it out to the kitchen, standing very still for a few minutes, looking carefully at the familiar objects around me. The old toaster, the kokeshi charm dolls, the cream stone on the kitchen counters. The room was full of bright sunshine. Everything sparkled. My house, I thought. My life. I'm not sure how long I stood there, but later I scribbled out a short note to my parents. What it said, exactly, I don't recall now. Something vague. 

Taking off, will write, love Shinra.

* * *

I ran west.

It's a blur now, as it was then, and all I remember is velocity and the feel of my boots padding along the water surface then transitioning to the thumping on the tree barks. I was running on adrenaline. A giddy feeling, in a way, except there was the dreamy edge of impossibility to it-like running a dead-end maze-no way out-it couldn't come to a happy conclusion and yet I was doing it anyway because it was all I could think of to do. It was pure flight, fast and mindless. I had no plan. Just hit the border at high speed and keep running. Near dusk I passed through Tonika village. I spent the night on one of the more elder oak's thick branches. In the morning, I headed straight north-west along the Tenryu River, which separates a small part of the border from Water, and which for me separated one life from another. The land was mostly wilderness. Though it was still late summer, the air already had the smell of autumn, piles of yellow-red leaves, everything crisp and clean. I remember a huge blue sky. Off to my right was the Tenryu River, wide as a ocean in places, and beyond the Tenryu River was the Land of Fire.

I could've done it. I could've jumped and started swimming for my life. Inside me, in my chest, I felt a terrible squeezing pressure. Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want to feel it-the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. I'm a fresh genie, I'm scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in my chest.

What would I do?

Would I jump? Would I feel pity for myself? Would I think about my family and my childhood and my dreams and all that I'm leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would I cry? 

I tried to swallow it back. I tried to smile, except I was crying.

Now, perhaps, I can understand why I've never told anyone else. The weight on my chest and shoulders. It's not just the embarrassment of tears. That's part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses me much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took my heart. A moral freeze: I couldn't decide, I couldn't act, I couldn't comport myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity. 

All I could do was cry. Quietly, not bawling, just the chest-chokes.

The birds around me, hidden way up high in the trees, the sky, kept humming a soft, monotonous little tune. Everywhere, it seemed, in the trees and water and sky, a great worldwide sadness came pressing down on me, a crushing sorrow, sorrow like I had never known it before. And what was so sad, I realized, was that Konohagakure had become a pitiful fantasy. Silly and hopeless. It was no longer a possibility. Right then, with the shore so close, I understood that I would not do what I should do. I would not swim away from my home village and my country and my life. I would not be brave. That old image of myself as a hero, as a man of conscience and courage, all that was just a threadbare pipe dream. Looking at the forest shrubbery of the shore on my side, I felt a sudden swell of helplessness come over me, a drowning sensation, as if I had toppled overboard and was being swept away by the silver waves. Chunks of my own history flashed by. Two lives intermingled into one. I saw a seven-year-old boy in a navy blue yukata and a festival oni mask and a set of new kunai and shurikens; I saw a sixteen-year-old kid decked out for his first prom, looking spiffy in a white tux and a black bow tie, his hair cut short and flat, his shoes freshly polished; I saw a young ten-year-old boy regurgitating his last meal in foreign territory, the grassy fields decorated with inks of red, bleeding and staining mother nature into an angry crimson, it was the battlefield. My whole life seemed to spill out into the river, swirling away from me, everything I had ever been or ever wanted to be. I couldn't get my breath; I couldn't stay afloat; I couldn't tell which way to swim. A hallucination, I suppose, but it was as real as anything I would ever feel. I saw my parents calling to me from the far shoreline. I saw Chi-chan, all the village folk, and all my sensei's and teachers from both visions, my girlfriend and high school buddies, and...Rev. Oh _God,_ Rev! I miss everything about him, his smiles, his earthly green eyes that shine _ohsogorgeously_ against his dirty mop of blonde hair. My senses override, images upon images flashing over his glazed, unfocused murky blue eyes. Like some outlandish sporting event: everybody screaming from the sidelines, rooting me on-a loud stadium roar. Hotdogs and popcorn-stadium smells, stadium heat. My genin team did katas along the banks of the Tenryu River; they had their standard field pack as well as their own preferred weapons on their side. All my aunts and uncles were there, and Abraham Lincoln, and Saint George, and several members of the United States Senate-and all the dead shinobi's that littered the field in the early morning wake, villagers with terrible burns, little kids without arms or legs- and a first lieutenant named Jordan Homer, and the last surviving veteran of the American Civil War, and a million ferocious citizens waving flags of all shapes and colours-people wearing forehead protectors, people with a killer's eyes- they were all whooping and chanting and urging me toward one shore or the other. I saw faces from my distant past and distant future. 

There was wind and the sky.

I try to will myself to drown.

I gripped my head, nails digging into my scalp, and thought, _Now._

I did try. It just wasn't possible.

All those eyes on me-the village, the whole universe-and I couldn't risk the embarrassment. It was as if there were an audience to my life, that swirl of faces along the river and in my head I could hear people screaming at me. Traitor! they yelled. Pussy! I felt myself blush. I couldn't tolerate it. I couldn't endure the mockery, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule. Even in my imagination, the shore just twenty yards away, I couldn't make myself be brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that's all it was.

And right then I submitted.

I would go to the war-I would continue to kill and maybe die-because I was embarrassed not to.

That was the sad thing. And so I sat at the centre of the river and cried.

It was loud now. Loud, hard crying.

The birds remained quiet. Watching him, patiently, squinting with their beady eyes at him and the river. Their eyes were flat and impassive. They didn't speak no more. They were simply there, like the river and the late-summer sun. And yet by their presence, their mute watchfulness, they made it real. They were the true audience. They were like a witness, like God, or like the gods and kami's who look on in absolute silence as we live our lives, as we make our choices or fail to make them.

One of the birds, with a sudden flap of its wings, took into the air and let out a piercing cry. 

Then after a time, my legs carried me back. Back towards Water.

* * *

The day was cloudy. I passed through small villages and town settlements with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the wetlands, and then towards the posts where Iwa and Kiri joined forces at, where I was a soldier, a shinobi, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.

* * *

**WHAT SHE SAW**

He would not go, I thought. Something would happen, miraculously, to prevent him. He would remain, with his long loping walk and half-slanted blue eyes that almost seem as though the entire ocean was kept in those orbs of his, and his talk that never excluded me. He would stay right here. And soon, because I desperately wanted to, and because every day mercifully made me older, quite soon I would be able to reply with such a lightning burst of knowingness that it would astound him, when he spoke of the space or was it some black sky that never ended anywhere beyond the continent, the countries and Earth itself. Then I would not be innerly belittled for being unable to figure out what he would best like to hear. At that good and imagines time, I would not any longer be limited. I would not any longer be young. 

* * *

I was six when Shinra left Aoki. The day before he was due to go, I knocked on the door of his room in the clan's main house. 

"Come in," Shinra said. "I'm packing. Do you know how to fold socks, Chi-chan?"

"Sure. Of course."

"Well, get folding on that bunch there, then."

I had come to say goodbye, but I did not want to say it yet. I got to work on the socks. I did not intend to speak about the matter of the Second Shinobi War, but the knowledge that I must not speak about it made me uneasy. I was afraid I would blurt out a reference to it in my anxiety not to. My mother had said, "He's taken it amazingly well-he doesn't even mention it, so we mustn't either."

"Tomorrow night you'll be leaving for the mission," I ventured.

"Yeh." He did not look up. He went on stuffing clothes and books into his travel bag. 

"I bet you'll be glad to see the ninjas of the seven swordsmen, eh?" I wanted him to say he didn't care about the swordsmen any more and that he would rather stay here.

"It'll be good to see them," Shinra said. "Mind handing over those socks now, Chi-chan? I think I can squash them in at the side here. Thanks. Hey, look at that, will you? Everything's in. Am I an expert packer or am I an expert packer?"

I sat on his bag for him so it would close, and then he tied a piece of rope around it because the straps were broken. 

"Ever thought what it would be like to be a traveller, Chi-chan?" he asked.

I thought of missing-nins, travelling shinobi's, who makes a living from bounty hunting from the bingo book, as well the counter-opposite, monks; who would occasionally pass through the gates moving from one village to another in a peaceful and humble manner. 

"It would be keen," I said, Because this was the word Shinra used to describe the best possible. "That's what I'm going to do someday."

He did not say, as for a moment I feared he might, that girls could not be travellers.

"Why not?" he said. "Sure you will, if you really want to. I got this theory, see, that anybody can do anything at all, anything, if they really set their minds to it. But you have to have this total concentration. You have to focus on it with your whole mental powers, and not let it slip away by forgetting to god it in your mind. If you hold it in your mind, like, then it's real, see? You take most people, now. They can't concentrate worth a darn."

"Do you think I can?" I inquired eagerly, believing that this was what he was talking about.

"What?" he said. "Oh-sure. Sure I think you can. Naturally."

* * *

Shinra did not write after he left Aoki. About a month later we had a letter from one of the chunin's that works with him. He was not where he was supposed to be. He somehow abandoned the mission and had not gone back. They lost contact with him since. My mother read the letter aloud to my father. She was too upset to care whether I was listening or not.

"I can't think what possessed him, Anzu. He never seemed irresponsible. What if something should happen to him? What if he's broke What do you think we should do?"

"What can we do? He can kill mercilessly and I'm sure he's nearly a jounin. What he does is his business. Simmer down, Mai, and let's decide what we're going to tell your father."

"Oh, kami," my mother said. "There's that to consider, of course."

I went out without either of them noticing. I walked to the hill at the edge of the clan's compound, and down into the valley where the scrub oak and popular grew almost toe the banks of the Tenryu River. I found the oak where we had gone last autumn, where Shinra had shown me a technique he claims to have stolen from the ninja's of the fire nation. A volley of countless fireballs erupting from one, bursting and dancing wildly on the tops of the river, almost looking as though the fire was just lapping the surface of the water. I climbed to the lowest branch and stayed there for a while.

I was not consciously thinking about Shinra. I was not thinking of anything. But when at last I cried, I felt relieved afterwards and could go home again.

Shinra departed from my mind, after that, with quickness that was due to the other things that happened. My aunt, Youko-obasan, who was a travelling merchant in the land of waves, returned to Aoki to live because the merchant business cut down on staff and she could not find another job. I was intensely excited and jubilant about her return, and could not see why my mother seemed the opposite, even though she was as fond of Youko-obasan as I was. Then my brother Shimon was born, and that same year Grandmother Makoto died. The strangeness, the believability, of both these events took up all of me.

When I was eight, almost two years after Shinra had left, he came back without warning. I came home from the civilian academy and found him sitting in our living room. I could not accept that I had nearly forgotten him until this instant. Now that he was present, and real again, I felt I had betrayed him by not thinking of him more.

He was wearing a navy-blue cloak that wrapped around his shoulders and neck protectively, covering him from neck to toe in a clad of blue. I was old enough now to notice that it was a cheap one and had been worn a considerable time. Otherwise, he looked the same, the same smile, the same knife-boned face with no flesh to speak of, the same unresting eyes.

"How come you're here?" I cried. "Where have you been Shinra?"

"I'm a traveller," he said. "Remember?"

* * *

For the first time in all the years we had known each other, we could not look the other in the eye. Around the table the children stabbed and snivelled, until mother, driven frantic, shrieked, _Shut up shut up shut up_. Shinra began asking me about Aoki then, as though nothing were going on around him.

Shinra announced that he was going to camp by the river. To save her family the hassle of preparing anything, he explained, but I felt this wasn't the real reason.

"Can I go, too?" I begged. I could not bear the thought of living in the house with all the others who were not known to me, and Shinra not here.

"Well, I don't know-"

"Please. Please, Shinra. I won't be any trouble, I promise."

Finally he agreed. He piggy-backed me there, running along the roof shingles of the old compound. _Clack clack clack, t_ he wind greets concrete and skin just the same, yet I am blessed to feel it. Its giddy currents flow through woodland canopies, unaware of how its song soothes those who can hear. I have always thought of the wind as so free, chaotic even, yet it too has its path, even if there are infinite possible destinations. It is air with passion, a drive that powers onwards, every direction an option. By the time I snapped out of my daze we arrived at a passageway. The road was narrow and dirt, and around it the low bushes grew, wild roses and blueberry and wold willow with silver leaves. Sometimes, I remember, we would come to a bluff of pale-leaved popular trees, and once a red-winged blackbird flew up out of the branches and into the hot dusty blue of the sky.

Then we were there. The soft fields lay beside the river. It was my first view of the water after so long ago. Shinra walked into the fields of high coarse grass and on down almost to the river's edge, where there was no shore but only the green rushes like floating meadows in which the waterbirds nested. Beyond the undulating reeds the open river stretched, deep, flowing, serene blue, out and out, beyond sight. The valleys stood silently in the background, a brooding presence of sky punching majesty. Brooches of soft and earthy green covered their lofty peaks, encircling them in wreaths of nature. A weeping waterfall poured from a gash in the rock face. It looked like a slide of silk-blue flowing down the mountain. Carrying its load of ice crystals, it appeared hemmed with silver. A distant thrumming sound emanated from it, like the steady rumble of a drum roll. Glinting brightly, it fed the river, the lifeblood of the forest. It was an awe-inspiring sight.

No human word would be applied. The Tenryu River was not lonely or untamed. These words relate to people, and there was nothing of people here. There was no feeling about the place. It existed in some world in which man was not yet born. I looked at the grey reaches of it and felt threatened. It was like the view of Kami which I had held since my grandmothers' death. Distant, indestructible, totally indifferent. 

Shinra left me off his back. 

"We're not going to camp _here_ , are we?" I asked and pleaded. 

"No. We'll camp up there in the bluff."

I looked. "It's still pretty close to the river, isn't it?"

"Don't worry," Shinra said, laughing. "You won't get your feet wet."

"I didn't mean that."

Shinra looked at me.

"I know you didn't," he said. "But let's learn to be a little tougher, and not let on, eh? It's necessary."

Shinra worked through the hours of sun, while I lay on the dry-patted down grass and looked up at the sky. The blue air trembled and spun with the heat haze, and the grass on which I was lying held the scents of herbs and dust and wild mint.

In the evening, Shinra took off to the river again, and then he walked back to the edge of the bluff and we spread out our blankets underneath it. He made a fire and we had sencha and a tin of stew, and then we went to bed. We did not wash, and we slept in our clothes. It was only when I curled up uncomfortably with the itching blanket around me that I felt a sense of unfamiliarity at being here, with Shinra only three feet away, a self-consciousness I would not have felt even the year before. I do not think he felt this sexual strangeness. Id he wanted me not to be a child-and he did-it was not with the wish that I would be a woman. It was something else.

"Are you asleep, Chimon?" he asked.

"No. I think I'm lying on a tree root." 

"Well, shift yourself then," he said. "Listen, kid, I never said anything before, because I didn't really know what to say, but-you know how I felt about your grandma dying, and that, don't you?"

"Yes," I said chokingly."It's okay. I know."

"I used to talk with Makoto-san sometimes. She didn't see what I was driving at, mostly, but she'd always listen, you know? You don't find many people like that."

We were both silent for a while.

"Look," Shinra said finally. "Ever noticed how much brighter the stars are when you're completely away from any houses? Even the lamps at the shrine, there, make enough glow to keep you from seeing properly like you can out here. What do they make you think about," he hesitates, "Chi...Chi-chan?"

"Well-"

"I guess most people don't give them much thought at all, except maybe to say- _very pretty_ -or like that. But the point is, they aren't like that. The stars and planets, in themselves, are just not like that, not _pretty_ , for kami's sake. They're gigantic-some of them burning-imagine those worlds tearing through space and made of pure fire. Or the ones that are absolutely dead-just rock or ice and no warmth in them. There must be some, though, that have living creatures like us perhaps. And maybe even chakra, or at least some form of that. You wonder what _they_ could look like, and what they feel. We won't ever get to know. But somebody will know, someday. I really believe that. Just like how Kaguya-hime, the rabbit goddess made this world came about. Do you ever think about this kind of thing at all?"

He was Twelve. The distance between us was still too great. For years I had wanted to be older so I might talk with him, but now I felt unready.

"Sometimes," I said, hesitantly, making it sound like _Never._

"There are these lights." He started again, "Lights that blaze in the silent sky. They move in great swaying bands of colour like a living organism. On some nights they would resemble the swirl of a nascent rose that had begun to open, sometimes it was a great river, and sometimes it was great lines descending to earth like the landing flashes of lightning. The colours were utterly brilliant and pure. The vibrant shades were in perpetual motion, dancing, flowing, changing shades." He paused, eyes unfocused and gazing far away into the distant night sky. "They're called the Northern Lights Chimon. The Aurora Borealis." Shinra's eyes closed, a soft smile ingrained onto his lips, hinting, as if reminiscing a faraway memory of his. 

"People usually say there must be a God," Shinra went on, "because otherwise how did the universe get here? But that's ridiculous. If the stars and planets go on to infinity, they could have existed forever, for no reason at all. Maybe they weren't ever created. All could be an elaborate genjutsu for all we know. Look-what's the alternative? To believe in a God who is brutal. What else could _they_ be? You've only got to look anywhere around you. It would be an insult to them to believe in a God like that. Most people don't like talking about this kind of thing-it embarrasses them, you know? Or else they're not interested. I don't mind. I can always think about things myself. You don't actually need anyone to talk to. But about God, though-if there's a war, like it looks there will be, would people claim that was planned? What kind of God would pull a trick like that? And yet, you know, plenty of guys would think it was a godsend, and who's to say they're wrong? It would be a job, and you'd get around and see places."

He paused, as though waiting for me to say something. When I did not, he resumed.

"Makoto-san told me about the last war, once. She hardly ever talked about it, but this once she told me about seeing various shinobis in the mud, actually going under, you know? And the way their eyes looked when they realised they weren't going to get out. Ever seen a mans' eyes when they're afraid, I mean really berserk with fear. Makoto said a guy tended to concentrate on the tools because he didn't dare think what was happening to the men. Including himself. Do you ever listen to the news at all, Chimon?"

"I-"

I could only feel how foolish I must sound, still unable to reply as I would have wanted, comprehendingly. I felt I had failed myself utterly. I could not speak even the things I knew. As for the other things, the things I did not know, I resented Shinra's facing me with them. I took refuge in pretending to be asleep, and after a while Shinra stopped talking.

* * *

Shinra left Aoki some months after the Third shinobi war began, and re-joined the roster. After his check with the T&I he was sent to the frontlines. We did not hear from him until about a year later, when a letter arrived for me.

"Chimon-what's wrong?" my mother asked.

"Nothing."

"Don't lie," she said firmly. "What did Shinra say in his letter, honey?"

"Oh-not much."

She gave me a curious look and then she went away. She would never have demanded to see the letter. I did not show it to her and she did not ask about it again.

Six months later, Shinra had been discharged from active duty because of a mental breakdown. Though, he never came back. I was told he had been violent, before, but now he was not violent. He was, passive.

 _Violent._ I could not associate the word with Shinra, who had been so much the reverse. I could not bear to consider what anguish must have catapulted him into that even greater anguish. But the way he was now seemed almost worse. How might he be? Sitting quite still, the animation gone from his face?

My mother cared about him a great deal, but her immediate thought was not for him.

"When I think of you, going up to Tenryu River that time," she said, "and going out camping with him, and what might have happened-"

I, also, was thinking of what might have happened. But we were not thinking of the same thing. For the first time I recognised, at least a little, the dimensions of his need to talk that night. He must have understood perfectly well how impossible it would be, with a nine-year-old. But there was no one else. All his life's choices had grown narrower and narrower. He had been forced to return to the alien river of home, and when finally he saw a means of getting away, it could only be into a turmoil which appealed him and which he dreaded even more than he knew. I had listened to his words, but I had not really heard them, not until now. It would not have made much difference to what happened, but I wished it were not too late to let him know. 

He went M.I.A. 

Once when I was on a break from the academy, my mother got me to help her clean out the storage room. We sifted through boxes full of junk, old clothes, schoolbooks, blunt and rusted kunai and shurikens, kokeshi dolls that once had been treasures. In one of the boxes I found the miniature sculpture of the rabbit goddess that Shinra had made for me a long time ago.

"Have you heard anything recently?" I asked, ashamed that I had not asked sooner.

She glanced up at me. "Just the same. It's always the same. They never bothered to form a search party. I don't think there will be much improvement."

Then she turned away.

"He always used to seem so-hopeful. Even when there was really nothing to be hopeful about. That's what I find so strange. He _seemed_ hopeful, didn't you think?"

"Maybe it wasn't hope," I said.

"How do you mean?"

I wasn't certain myself, I was thinking of all the schemes he'd had, the ones that couldn't possibly have worked, the unreal solutions to which he'd clung because there were no others, the brave and useless strokes of fantasy against a war that was both the world's and his own. 

"I don't know," I said. "I just think things were always more difficult for him than he let on, that's all. Remember that letter?"

"Yes."

"Well-what it said was that they could force his body to march and even kill, but what they didn't know was that he'd fooled them. He didn't live inside any more."

"Oh-Chimon-" my mother said. "You must have suspected right then."

"Yes, but-"

I could not go on, could not say that the letter seemed only the final heartbreaking extension of that he'd always had of distancing himself from the absolute unbearability of battle. 

Some words came into my head, two lines from a poem I had once heard. I knew it referred to Yoshisada from the Land of Iron who committed seppuku on the beach. He was buried with a bronze war bell, though when villagers went searching for the bell, it seemed the bell was upturned and buried deep at the bottom of the ocean, beyond recovery. But to me, it had another meaning, a different relevance.

_Whither bound, the moon? Sunken, lies the bell, at the bottom of the sea._

The night must move like this for him, slowly, all through the days and nights. I could not know whether the land he journeyed through was inhabited by terrors, the old monster-oni's of the river, or whether he had discovered at last a way for himself to make the necessary dream perpetual.

I put the goddess doll away once more, gently and ruthlessly, back into the cardboard box.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave a comment down below whether if you enjoyed it or not, i'd love to hear your thoughts on this style of writing. i do hope it wasn't too confusing. as I mentioned previously, this is just a prologue to the actual story, so don't get to upset at not seeing any progress whatsoever in plot. i don't want to spoil too too much. 
> 
> anyhoo, I hope you all enjoyed! i'll be posting the next chapter based on how well you all take to this one. if not many are interested in this style of writing then there really is no point in posting the next chapter.
> 
> as always, thank you all so much for your wonderful support, stay safe, stay happy,
> 
> cheers~


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